Take My Hand as the Sun Descends
by sunsetdreamer
Summary: A series of drabble-esque pieces put together mostly following the rules of an ipod Shuffle Challenge.


Hey there! This is my first time trying my hand at anything Bones related (clearly), so as a relatively (read, VERY) new, avid fan of the show, I figured the ipod shuffle challenge was a good way to ease my way into the fandom. It worked for me a year and a half ago with Charmed, so I'm sticking with what's been good to me, haha. For anyone who's unfamiliar with the way this works, you set your ipod on shuffle, and you have from the beginning of ONE song until its end to complete a drabble of sorts. Once the song changes, you have to quit and move on to a new piece. Some turn out better than others, and sometimes it's frustrating (especially for me, since I never seem to get an idea until the song is half over) but it's a really fun way to get the creative juices flowing. Anyway, although I'm blazing through the past seasons at a pretty rapid rate, I'm not 100% caught up to the end of the fifth yet, sooo if there are CRAZY plot twists I've ignored in any of these, just know it's not intentional; colour me uninformed. I think most of these could fall anywhere within the series, but there are a couple that run with the way I would envision Booth and Brennan interacting once they've got the established relationship thing going for them. Happy trails!

* * *

**Take My Hand as the Sun Descends: as dictated by ipod**

**The Cave – Mumford & Sons**

"Bones, there is nothing wrong with me, okay? Epitome of health. Right here."

She frowns. "That's far from true. If either of us were to be the "epitome" of healthy – not to say that's either likely or an accurate term – it would clearly be me before-

"My point is, if you don't ever actually give in and eat the pie, I don't see why I'm expected to give in and eat the alfalfa."

"Falafel." Brennan corrects, her tone clearly displaying her irritation. "I'm just saying, it's a more than adequate substitute for a hamburger. I'm relatively certain you're unaware of this, but approximately once every four hours, you cease to breathe in your sleep for a period averaging between five and ten seconds before resuming regular respiratory function. I find it quite unnerving."

Booth pauses with his glass halfway to his lips and lifts his eyebrows, "You know, Bones, if you're going to be creeping on people when they're sleeping, it's probably best to keep it to yourself."

"I wasn't creeping." She says defensively, and Booth smiles into his glass as the frown deepens on her face. "Sleep apnea is a very serious condition; I have no desire to wake up in the morning with your lifeless corpse beside me, Booth."

* * *

**Faith, Hope, Love – Starsailor**

"Bones!"

She hears her name from a great distance as she's dragged down the dark corridor. _Bones. Bones and Booth. Booth has bones; Booth's bones. Bones has bones, too; Booth's Bones' bones._ She gives a little giggle and the man pulling her, the man she would be fighting harder if she hadn't been pumped full of drugs, yanks her forward again. Hard. She cries out a little, but she doesn't realize she's done it until the primeval roar of fury from her partner reaches her ears. He's far away, but not as far away as he had been when he first called her name.

She stumbles, and she wants to blame it on her shoes but that's not right, because wasn't she wearing tennis shoes? And she hears a crack and realizes the noise came from _her_, because now she's on the ground and her face is wet because of something it touched on the wall… or is the wall wet because of something it touched on her face? She doesn't know. Right now she can't bring herself to care.

The man is pulling again, and the blood rushes hot in her ears and she wishes she could focus, because she _can _take care of herself, but maybe just this one time she won't have to, because she can hear steps behind her and she knows it's Booth, just like she knows that the man they have been chasing for the last two weeks can't get a proper grip on her arm because his hands are slippery with sweat. Just like she knows, she _knows _that he's sweating because he's scared to death her partner is going to catch up to them. If she were the guessing type – which she's _not_, but in this case she's been drugged and knocked on the head and it's pertaining to _Booth_, so it's not technically really a guess – she would say he's more scared of Booth than he is of jail.

* * *

**Cotton – The Mountain Goats**

Neither of them has uttered a word since that service station exit they passed forty minutes ago.

"I'm sorry, Booth."

Brennan offers the words up with so much sincerity, for a moment Booth can't quite figure out if she has made him feel better or worse.

"It's not your fault, Bones." Booth replies gruffly.

She knows the tightly concealed anger is not toward her, but for a moment, she wishes it was. Because then at least she would know what to do. She has become very adept at making Booth not mad at her. She doesn't know how to fix this.

* * *

**It's All Been Done – Barenaked Ladies**

"Run!" Booth cries excitedly as he races past her.

"Booth, this doesn't make any sense!" She tries to protest, but her innately competitive nature spurs her into action even as the words leave her mouth. "I'm aware that you lack the scientific education I've obtained, but you _must _know that even a person as physically fit as yourself can't possibly succeed in outrunning the waves."

He smiles patiently, even as the water crashes into his calves exactly the way she predicted. "The point is to _try_, Bones."

She shakes her head and releases a loud sigh, but when the next pull of the tide brings a crest of water rushing toward them, she grins and sprints toward the shore.

* * *

**I'm On a Boat – Incredibad**

She watches Angela and Booth dance around one another; they're laughing and singing and ultimately butchering a song she doesn't know. She assumes there is an underlying joke within the nonsensical lyrics that she isn't understanding, but Booth is too preoccupied to explain it to her, and anyway, she's less than certain he and Angela know the song half as well as they think they do. There are long spells of off-key humming that take the place of the lines they can't remember, and while Brennan knows Booth and Angela's musical knowledge is vast, she's pretty sure most of the lines to just about every song they know temporarily fled their memories three shots of jäger ago.

She smiles slightly sadly as Booth trips over an errant chair and lands in a rather painful looking heap on the floor. Angela doubles over and clutches at her aching stomach muscles as she laughs.

Brennan feels a twinge of what can only be quantified as jealousy when Booth begins singing anew from his current position on the floor, and she wishes she knew at least as many of the words as they do so that she could join the scene.

* * *

**I've Got Dreams to Remember – Otis Redding**

"I'm not her, Booth." She says softly.

Booth shakes his head and clears the intense gaze he realizes far too late has been fixed on his partner.

"I know." He returns offhandedly.

He lies.

In a way, yes, he does know. But in others, this "reality" feels so much less real than the other one, he can't help but think that this ass backward situation has to, _has to_ be the dream. Being with her had been natural, and knowing they aren't together, it feels awkward and foreign and so completely _wrong_, he can't help but just stare sometimes.

"I don't know how to be her. She was just a character… I don't… She's not me. I can't be her. I can't."

He hears how badly she wants him to understand, _needs _him to understand, and he thinks he does… but somehow that sort of makes it worse. Because she just. Doesn't. Get it.

"I've never asked you to be, Bones. I don't want _her_. Not really."

There is silence as what's implied by this is left to float on the air between them.

* * *

**Because the Night – Patti Smith**

She gasps and then inhales his warm breath mixed with hers as he rips open the front of her blouse. She's sucking on the skin covering his broad shoulder when he hoists her effortlessly against her hallway wall and peppers her newly uncovered skin with hot, messy kisses.

Her fingers twist in his hair and she tightens her legs around his waist reflexively; her back slams repeatedly against the wall with the force of Booth's pelvis and hers grinding together. She's hating her jeans (and his) and loving them at the same time – because the added friction of the coarse material is winding her up and frustrating her simultaneously – when Booth chuckles breathlessly against the soft swell of her right breast.

"What?" She pants, "What's funny?"

"So far tonight, I've broken your coffee table, ruined your favourite shirt, manhandled you up against a wall and lifted you clear off your feet without permission, and _this _is the one time you've refrained from making any mention of alpha male tendencies within a possessive, surprisingly unevolved, modern patriarchal society."

"What-…I don't sound like that."

"Yes you do."

"Shut up, Booth." She growls succinctly into his mouth, nipping his bottom lip less than gently. _How's __**that **__for colloquial?_

Booth laughs harder, even as he braces her weight with one arm and begins fumbling for her jean button with the other. "You won't let me open a door for you, but you'll let me drag you to my cave and have my wicked way with you?"

"My… _My _cave. _Home_. My home. Not yours." She corrects distractedly, even though she wishes he would stop talking and just-

Booth unfastens her pants and yanks them roughly down her legs as far as he can manage.

_Yes. _Her body sings.

Brennan opens her eyes and sees the smirk gracing his face. Recognizing the mischievous twist to his mouth, she narrows her gaze and cuts him off before he can utter a syllable.

"One word, Booth." She threatens, "One more word and I'll send you home."

His eyes twinkle. "Bullshit."

She's had enough. She takes her hands out of his hair, and while one hand solidly palms the bulge in his jeans that _has _to be painful at this point, the other hand reaches behind her and pushes off the wall.

There's a cry of surprise against her lips as Booth tries to re-balance them, and then they fall. She giggles even as her knees land hard on the carpeted floor (tomorrow she'll have bruises, but it will take her a minute to remember why) and Booth grunts as he takes the worst of it.

She knows that the landing had to have been painful for him, and she should feel bad… she knows she should… but as Booth finally, _finally_ stops talking and flicks his tongue over her clavicle, she just can't feel anything but satisfaction.

* * *

**Overboard – Ingrid Michaelson**

Parker manages to stay by his side until the glass doors to the lab come into sight. Then his son gives him a pleading, desperate look and Booth smiles before putting the kid out of his misery. He gives a quick, acquiescing nod of his head, and Parker grins and takes off at a dead run toward the platform where he has spotted Bones and Cam bent over one of the tables.

Uh oh.

"Parker." Booth barks, but Parker is already too distracted to hear him. He cringes in anticipation of the loud sirens his son is going to trigger when he races up the stairs, but thankfully, Cam snatches up her card and slides it through the slot just in time.

Booth sighs and shoots Cam a grateful smile, and she returns it with an amused roll of her eyes. His partner, predictably, doesn't so much as glance up from the skeleton on the table.

Usually, he'd have serious reservations about letting Parker come so close to a body, but he knows from an earlier conversation with Bones that this particular skeleton is on loan from another museum; it's not going to traumatize Parker any more than an ordinary class trip. It's certainly considerably less daunting – not to mention _cleaner – _than oh, let's say, some finger in a bird nest.

He slides his own key card through the reader and hops up the stairs at a far more subdued pace than his young son.

"…isn't that awesome, Bones?"

Booth smirks as Parker finishes his story, and at the mention of her name, Brennan's head snaps to attention and focuses on the boy's face for the first time.

"What?" She stares blankly for a moment, and then the crease between her brows relaxes into a warm smile. "Oh, hi Parker."

Parker takes it in stride and greets her enthusiastically as if he hadn't already done so twenty seconds earlier.

"Who's this?" He asks inquisitively.

Oh Dear God.

Booth's heart climbs into his throat as Parker makes a grab for the skeleton's left tibia. He takes a step forward to defend his child before his partner can reflexively break the boy's grubby, ice-cream stained fingers, and then he stops abruptly when Brennan gently catches Parker's wrist inches from contact.

"Gloves, Parker." She admonishes calmly, "Never touch anything up here without gloves."

Parker smiles sheepishly at her and murmurs an apology, and Booth continues to stare, slightly dumbstruck, as Parker walks straight to the drawer containing the latex gloves and slips on a pair.

Brennan lifts the bone and carefully places it in Parker's outstretched hands. As if he is entirely aware of the rare privilege she is allowing him, Parker cradles it reverently until his curiosity is satisfied, and then he mimics Brennan's motions as he carefully hands it back.

Booth stares at her incredulously; he doesn't _ever _get to touch the bones.

Brennan's in the middle of explaining some of the bone markers to Parker when she catches Booth's stare, and she flushes under the weight of the affection she sees in his eyes.

"What?" She demands somewhat defensively.

Booth shrugs, but he doesn't avert his gaze.

"Sometimes you still surprise me is all."

* * *

_There you have it! Okay, maybe the "I'm on a Boat" drabble was a bit of a cop out due to how overtly it was incorporated, but I mean really; come on. Nothing serious can come out of a song that uses the word "flippy-floppies." Generally I make myself do at least ten, but considering I kind of sort of accidentally cheated by nearly two full songs for the last two pieces, I figured eight would do. Myyy bad. Self discipline isn't really one of my strong suits._


End file.
